audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

hi all!

so I'm coming up to one of my regular revisits of Utena. I noticed that there seems to be a lot more in the web about J.A. Seazer. Which is cool! However, I find mostly the music itself, with very little written in English about him or the 演劇実験室◎万有引力 Engeki-Jikkenshitsu Ban'yū Inryoku (his theatrical company). Are there any good resources?

I guess also a line that piqued my interest was found in the good aul Ohtori.nu site about Be-Papas, which mentions that 'Absolute Destiny: Apocalypse' and 'Seal Spell' predate Utena by a decade. I couldn't find any info anywhere to corroborate that or find any pre-Utena versions of Seazer's Utena work. Do people know if there's a place online to find that?

I don't know how to end this post so I'll just say thank you and much obliged.

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Right, so I appear to have several Seazer CDs haha. 12 that are not from SKU. To be totally honest, I've only listened to a couple of them, and that's probably where you heard that, as I heard the songs myself on an album from like...the 80's. I want to say it was Ship of Fools but I would need to review it to be sure. Let me see if track list availability has improved since I acquired these, and I'll get them shared out to you folks and see what I can scrounge up infowise from the dark bowels of my hard drive...

At one point I did physically have a few of his CDs but I don't have them any longer, they were victims of a very bad financial stretch in my life.

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

All the ones used in SKU were redone for the series even if they come from or borrow heavily from previous works by Seazer.

Still working on a little happiness batch of material here!

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

So!! I'm working on tagging and trying to organize this horrible mess. Query for you translatey folk!! I have this here, Shintokumaru:

Which obvious corresponds to one of these discs, which give a different song titles for tracks 6, 7, and 8. Based on the song titles I have here, can anyone tell me which CD this is? (Any interest in translating while you're totally bored?) It looks like it's the same performance either way so it probably doesn't matter a *ton* but I'd prefer to match up the discs as best as possible.

Ahem! In the meantime, here's current progress! These are all Tenjo Sajiki / JA Seazer. The zips range 45-75MB. Obviously, because these are recordings of plays, there's lots of talking, but I honestly haven't listened to them recently, I just wanted to get them tagged and up for you guys ASAP. I randomly picked the ones I organized so these have no particular importance out of the recordings I have.

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

It looks like what we want is actually mostly his later work with Banyu but they're even harder to find.

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

(1980) SealbreakingThis one is JA Seazer's specifically, as are the following two. There are some tracks with Tenjo Sajiki involvement but it's his name on the CD.http://www.megafileupload.com/krWl/(1980)Sealbreaking.zip

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

This has drifted away from the OP's request for English writings about Seazer, but... if we're sharing our Seazer, I have a fan-subtitled DVD .iso of the movie Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets. If anyone can think of a way I can realistically share it, I'd be happy to.

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Giovanna wrote:

(1980) SealbreakingThis one is JA Seazer's specifically, as are the following two. There are some tracks with Tenjo Sajiki involvement but it's his name on the CD.http://www.megafileupload.com/krWl/(1980)Sealbreaking.zip

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Dallbun wrote:

This has drifted away from the OP's request for English writings about Seazer, but... if we're sharing our Seazer, I have a fan-subtitled DVD .iso of the movie Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets. If anyone can think of a way I can realistically share it, I'd be happy to.

Google Drive, but if you can't, sendspace a zip of them and I will host them on my GDrive space if you don't want anything to do with google.

I stopped seeking to be sought after. That wasn't being true to myself.I want to become someone who can exercise power. I want to become a prince. - Ikuni

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

For me, buying Angel Creation, Namely Light helped me a lot--that one specifically because it's been released with an English insert booklet, and can be purchased very cheaply (I think it costs around 6 dollars). The insert booklet is great--it's got a list of the productions that each of the songs on the CD originally came from, plus some background info and stage pics, as well as a bit of commentary from Seazer (a bit).Another thing--someone mentioned Pastoral, to Die in the Country--well, it's on youtube with English subtitles! https://youtu.be/MThQ8kQHEyg. I have to add, though, it has some really, really disturbing content. Some examples under spoiler code: [A mother is at one point pressured into killing her newborn child, & there's a scene of the protagonist as a 15-year-old boy being violently raped that lasts the length of an entire song ]. I absolutely recommend it because it's brilliant, really, but it's very much not for everybody.There's also a short film that's on youtube with subtitles, Grass Labyrinth: https://youtu.be/91VN172ejOE. I watched that one longer ago so I don't remember it too clearly, but I'd advise caution with this one, too.I will note, in those videos, the song lyrics aren't always translated, and that can be frustrating if you're watching primarily for the music.What I haven't ever found is English translations for any of the works that the duel songs came from. That would be absolutely fantastic.One random tidbit I have is that Wakaba's duel song is from an adaptation of Hamlet. That's mentioned in the Angel Creation insert booklet and on a lot of Japanese sites.The Rose Egg Sophia CD is great because it's got music that wasn't in Utena, but it's all been translated (though not necessarily accurately) by two or three different groups. Unfortunately, it's not cheap to buy.

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Looking at the stuff people linked to, I found a REALLY great resource, lots of Seazer films with English subtitles: http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama.html. I think maybe not all of them are Seazer, but you can look that stuff up on places like imdb and wikipedia, generally. At any rate, a lot of it is Seazer.

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

At Times, Love Is wrote:

Looking at the stuff people linked to, I found a REALLY great resource, lots of Seazer films with English subtitles: http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama.html. I think maybe not all of them are Seazer, but you can look that stuff up on places like imdb and wikipedia, generally. At any rate, a lot of it is Seazer.

Pretty awesome. At a glance, only The Boxer seems to have English subtitles, but that is one of the ones Seazer worked on.

For reference, going off of his Japanese Wikipedia article, and using the titles on the aforelinked site, Seazer was involved in:

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

Dallbun wrote:

At Times, Love Is wrote:

Looking at the stuff people linked to, I found a REALLY great resource, lots of Seazer films with English subtitles: http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama.html. I think maybe not all of them are Seazer, but you can look that stuff up on places like imdb and wikipedia, generally. At any rate, a lot of it is Seazer.

Pretty awesome. At a glance, only The Boxer seems to have English subtitles, but that is one of the ones Seazer worked on.

For reference, going off of his Japanese Wikipedia article, and using the titles on the aforelinked site, Seazer was involved in:

You're right about only Boxer having English subtitles. I made a mistake there.Seazer was definitely involved in more of those--Emperor Tomato Ketchup for example--I underestimated how easy it was to find this information, clearly, because his Wikipedia page doesn't have much. Imdb lists some more, but still not all.One thing I found--Directions to Servants/Cloudcuckooland is apparently an adaptation of a work by Jonathon Swift. Swift was the only name in Allegory, Allegorier, Allegoriest I wasn't sure about, but I don't have any doubt now it was Jonathon Swift. Seazer was involved in that also.Another thing, I made a mistake. I got Pastoral mixed up with Farewell to the Ark, which I've also seen on youtube with English subtitles. So if anything I said about Pastoral was not true, that's why. I can't seem to find a link to this one at the moment, though.

Re: audiology audiologyER audiologyEST: thirsty for J.A. Seazer info

It looks like it's more of an assemblage of resources than a biography... several chapters are interviews, for example... but some of the contents are relevant to this discussion. For example, Chapter VII is a list of the music he's done for films - presumably much more authoritative than the Wikipedia page.

I'm actually going to Japan in a few days, but the book is about $20 used. A little too steep for me right now.